In which Cisco creates a whole new breed of fundie

The BBQ Pit
41

Cisco wrote:

I believe in the God Whom I know.

Some aspects of Him are described in the Bible accurately, some are not. There are other sources that describe Him accurately, too. Like this one, for instance. But it’s not perfect, either.

I often see Him in the faces of beggars and winos who live in the street. I seldom see Him in the faces of priests and men with political power. I usually hear Him in the voices of children. I seldom hear Him in the sermons from pulpits.

I feel Him most when I am lost and alone. He is my Loving Father, and the Love Everlasting. He is my Hope, my Comforter, and my Redeemer. He is the Absolute Truth, the Only Way for me, and the Light by which I see.

When I rejected Him, He embraced me. When I taunted Him, He kissed me. When I ridiculed Him, He smile at me. When I tore off His robe, beat Him with a whip, and punctured His skull with thorns, He told me that He loved me.

I can no more abandon my faith in Him than I can abandon my own body. My body is not even real. It is rotting meat, decaying flesh, cells that are dying. But He is Eternal, and loves goodness so much that, were there anyone more good than He, He would worship them.

Now, before you ask me any more questions, you reread this again and again and again. Meanwhile, I pray that the God Who goes with me will go with you. All the best to you, my friend.

42

Hey Cisco-Is she constantly throwing her Christianity in your face? I just re-read some of the posts, and I’m a little unclear about this. By throwing it in your face, I mean is she constantly trying to convert you, and do you tell her to stop?

43

IIRC, this is one of those oft-quoted remarks that isn’t actually a real quote. As far as I know, nobody famous actually penned or voiced that line about “defend to the death your right to say it, blah blah.” I think this has been mentioned a few times before, since it’s quoted somewhat frequently around here, and always misattributed, since there’s nobody to whom it can be attributed.

44

It was first said by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing in Friends of Voltaire, 1906.

45

yosemitebabe - I was with you up until that last post. I mean, you’re going over the top a little bit.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that I love my girlfriend and respect her very much but I don’t respect her religious beliefs? I guess it’s the atheist equivalent of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” You can’t accept that and you’re calling me close minded?

46

By the way, IMHO Libertarian being a Christian is like a MENSA member with a crack habit, I’ll never understand it. We libertarians, who owe so much to Ayn Rand, ought to do as she suggested and dump all these feel-good lying-to-ourselves beliefs. The effect of dumping any notion of being forced to submit to human authority, the freedom of action embodied in libertarian ideals when we realize nobody has the right to use force against us, is just totally nullified by then subjecting oneself to a harsh and oppressive “divine” authority. It doesn’t make any sense…

…but I still respect Lib, even despite that very GD-like response just now. Alot of smart people have a few really irrational beliefs, nobody except the guys at CSICOP can be 100% strict about evaluating their own beliefs all the time. I’ll say this, it could always be worse. Christianity’s better than power crystals, magnet bracelets, or chiropracty.

47

I’m not following, Meatros. I’ve read your kindly provided definition of begging the question, but I don’t see how it applies to my statement. I’m not trying to create a strawman, though maybe I did; Scientology, Erik von Daniken and Christianity all have about the same level of believability to me. I’m comparing apples to apples.

48

RexDart wrote:

What you don’t understand (or else do, but won’t say) is that by dumping what I know, that would be lying to myself. I might never have had a backache, but I do not presume that you are lying to yourself if you say you do. :wink:

49

No, meatros, not constantly. Like I said, she goes through phases. Sometimes she can be pretty skeptical. Sometimes we’ll go weeks or maybe even months without talking about it, but sometimes she’ll tell me jesus loves me three or four days in a row. She knows I don’t like it and yes, I’ve asked her to stop. Sometimes she’ll say “you believe in god, you just don’t know it yet” :eek:

50

What I was arguing against was your instant dismissal of these beliefs based on limited knowledge. I think you should make an informed statement, rather than one that relies on what you have heard from “popular” sources. For example, there are plenty of reason’s to think Scientology is full of shit; None of them should be from a base of little knowledge. The same goes for Erik Von Daniken, which if I remember correctly, argues for the existence of UFO’s, which certainly doesn’t fall into apples to apples-IMHO.

51

Well then I must amend my statements. The way I saw/read it, you were the only one dismissing beliefs and attacking. If she is trying to convert you, then you most certainly have the right to speak your voice.
FTR, I still don’t think your relationship will last, primarily because of Christianity. Eventually it will be a wedge between you two, such as it’s a core belief. I’m not saying that there’s no possibility, mind you, but it would take a lot of work IMHO.

52

Cisco—you started the thread, titled, “Help! My girlfriend is a Christian!” It’s obviously a problem for you. And lack of respect is certainly something you brought up in that OP. And yes, if she’s making noises that sound like she hopes to convert you, yeah, that’s a big problem too, and that’s on her head. But this is addressing your attitude now.

I don’t doubt that you like and even respect a great deal about her. But it’s not enough, if you have to start an OP like that. And your obvious contempt for Christianity is an issue. Not because you feel that way, exactly—you are entitled to not respect anything you like. No skin off my nose.

But your girlfriend may not take kindly to you feeling that her belief is something akin to a dragon in the garage. Have you asked her? Have you asked her if she minds that you think she is deluded and is fooling herself? Have you asked her if she minds that you think that she believes in something as silly and absurd as a dragon in the garage?

You can’t have it both ways. You either think that her belief is something—while you can’t embrace or understand—something reasonable to believe, or you don’t. Do you think that believing in dragons in garages is a reasonable belief? And if you don’t think it’s reasonable, how can you say you really and completely respect her? You may respect other facets of her personality, very much, I’m sure. But her religion is most likely a huge chunk of what she is, and if you don’t respect that, well, you don’t respect a big part of her. How can I make that any clearer?

53

I think what she was trying to say Meatros is that you can read about Scientology for about 5 minutes and realize what a load of horse poo it is, therefore there is no reason to require complete mastery of a topic that has been debated for over two thousand years to assert that you don’t believe in it.

I do agree though that you should have knowledge of something before dismissing it. One of my only atheist friends is an atheist solely because his parents are christians, other than that he knows basically nothing about the religion. I think that is pretty stupid. And he hasn’t even lived with his parents for years. Stubborn little guy…

54

A backache is a testable phenomenon, you could design experiments to ascertain it’s cause and correlate the presence of that condition with instances of people saying “my back hurts.” So while you can’t know it experientially if you haven’t had one, you can explain it and formulate a good idea of how someone else might possess such knowledge as “I have a backache.” That statement would be descriptive and of the same character as the experience it purports to describe, and the experience would be essentially similiar to other pain experiences you have had direct knowledge of.

OTOH, I don’t think you (or anyone else) can know what you claim to know, namely the truth of various religious statements. Religious experience (if it really were more than just your mind tricking you) does not have a testable cause, it defies causal explanation, and is not similiar to any experience that I (or most people for that matter) ever had knowledge of. Thus the best conclusion for me to make is that you don’t actually know it, but you just think you do. Of course I can’t know with certainty what you know or don’t know, because of that stupid “problem of other minds” thing, I can’t get into your head, but I sure can infer. But I suppose I’ll leave epistemology for GD where it belongs :slight_smile:

55

Well, how much time should one put into studying what one has come to believe is nonsense? One has to make value judgements on where to invest one’s time every day. There is such a thing as too open a mind.

I’ve read enough, from sources I respect, to form a judgement of them. And have read some of the source material - some Scientology stuff back in the 70’s, one of von Daniken’s books, and most of the Bible. All three postulate that creatures exist that are greater than humans. Honestly, I have better things to do with my time than research them all so extensively that I can pick holes in every paragraph. Perhaps if I was getting paid for it…

56

You’ve done your research then. That was not what you suggested to Lib though. You said:

“Sorry, Libertarian, that’s a very weak argument. One doesn’t need to know much about Scientology or Erik von Daniken to know that they are crap. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call Christians cultists, but the argument that one has to know a lot about something in order to disbelieve in it, frankly, won’t fly.”
You said that in response to Lib’s:
“The argument that I am making is that you despise something you know almost nothing about. That is, frankly, spooky.”

I don’t think Lib was talking about a disbelief per se, more like a passionate despising of someone’s beliefs. There is a difference.

57

Meatros, right on both counts. But, I don’t think I know much compared to the experts. I think I know enough for my purposes. And somehow, ‘despise’ slipped under the radar when I read Lib’s comment. It does make a difference.

58

Exactly so. Nobody should be expected to spend their time looking into something that appears to be bunk. We just don’t have all the time in the world to look into everything that we can’t 100% rule out.

I think it’s a balancing test. On one scale you have your best guess as to how likely some proposition or set of beliefs is to be true. On the other you have how important it would be to you to know the truth of the issue. If someone proposes that some nobleman was the real William Shakespeare, and I thought about whether I’d want to investigate that claim, I’d consider both how likely it appears on its face and what significance the answer would have to me (either actual impact on my life, or mere amusement.)

Claims appearing to be supernatural have a pretty low chance of being true, on first glance. However, some of those claims, if true, would have a pretty darn big impact on your life. So you balance the scales. IMHO, some religions if true would have great impact, and so are worth at least a little investigation even though they seem ridiculously improbable. YMMV, of course.

59

Totally uncalled for comment, even for the pit. Did it make you feel better?

I must either be complacent or just getting thick-skinned due to encounters with other dopers with much better arguements than Cisco uses because his posts didn’t phase me in the least. When you read someone’s posts and you can see how adament they are about something, whether in your opinion it is right or wrong, you just know that anything you say is just a waste of typing. Absolutely nothing you say to this guy is gonna make a difference because he has complete tunnel-vision and he will never say anything wrong in his opinion. He will always have the right answer to anything you question him about that he has stated in his posts.

60

ultress have you even been reading this thread? I’ve agreed with what several people have said here and we’ve been having a good conversation imho that is rapidly progressing without stagnation, quite contrary to whatever thread you think you read.

I don’t know where you get the idea that anything you say to me is a waste of typing, maybe you just have a stick up your ass, I don’t know. If you’re saying that these people aren’t going to convert me to christianity then you’re just stating the obvious, I certainly don’t expect them to convert to atheism, nor am I trying to get them to. However, if you’re just talking about me and this conversation in general then I suggest you do some actual reading and rethink your incredibly weak post. Your statements are not unlike your lower intestine: stinky, and full of danger.